This Day
by firesoulslayer
Summary: In an alternate universe not far away Kurt reaches enlightenment.


**Title**: _Dieser Tag_ (This Day)  
**Fandom**: X-Men  
**Genre**: Days of Future Past continuity (Earth-811)  
**Rating**: G  
**Characters**: Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler  
**Disclaimer**: X-Men belongs to Marvel, not me.  
**Author's Notes**:_ Challenge fic: Titanic. A German opera singer. Awakening. _Playing around a little, stylistically. Feedback is appreciated.

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The darkness surrounded the caged man like an old familiar friend. It seemed like it was always dark these days, though reason spoke and insisted that this could not be true. There must be light somewhere, he said to himself. Outside, perhaps.

He couldn't remember the last time he had been outside. Before the Sentinels, surely. His mind struggled to recall a life before he'd become the mutant. He'd had a name, hadn't he? What was his name? Graceful fingers tapped his chin.

He'd been famous.

I was a German opera singer, he said. The words rolled off of his tongue smoothly. Delightedly, he tried the taste of them again. I was a German opera singer.

A smile curved his thin lips. At once he stood up from the worn pallet that served as his bed in this cage. Shoulders straight, inhale.

_O diese Sonne!  
Ha, dieser Tag!  
Ha, dieser Wonne  
sonnigster Tag!  
Jagendes Blut!  
Jauchzender Mut!_

_O diese Sonne!_ Her smile was such a sun, when she would smile for me, he said. Gently, he ran the fingers of his hands over his lips and shaped them like the picture in his faded memories. A patch of brown hair weaved through his mind.

She would always tell me how my singing brought her such joy. _Jauchzender Mut!_ What is her name?

Kitty loved my singing, he said as he resumed his seat on the lumpy mattress that served as his bed in this cage. He cocked his head thoughtfully. But, there was something else that she loved.

Slowly, the picture began to form in his mind. A behemoth, slow yet majestic. Silver gleamed brightly, polished to a shine. She had loved it so. But what was it? he asked himself. He squinted against the non-existent light and tried to pull the fractured pieces of his mind into a whole picture.

He stared at the imaginary scene for several moments, twisting and tilting his head so that he could view it from different angles. A ship, he decided finally. It looked like a ship.

So you see, he said calmly, we are clearly not going mad at all. We remember Kitty and we remember her ship, the _Titanic_. It was a very beautiful boat. We remember that there was sun, before the Sentinels. The only thing we do _not_ remember is our name.

_What's in a name? That which we call a rose  
By any other word would smell as sweet._

I was a poet as well as an opera singer, he reasoned happily. Ah, my kingdom for a pen. The words I would write would—

He stopped and cocked his head. If he had remembered the word whisper, he would have realized that what he heard were soft voices coming ever closer. Have you come to hear my poems? he called out. Have you come to hear me sing?

The voice grew louder and now he recognized two distinct cadences. He began to snatch at the air wildly, hoping to catch more and more words. Each time his fist closed around another phrase he brought it to his ear, listening intently to what it had to tell him.

"He's been left to rot alone down here. Forgotten."

A sharp _shing_ and a loud creak came to him next. He clutched the sounds tightly in his fist, not wanting to forget them again. Light spilled into his world and he cried out against the pain the flared in his eyes.

A gasp.

"My God, it's Kurt! Kurt, it's me! It's Kitty!"

Kitty! He blinked, trying to bring her into focus.

"Nightcrawler! Are you hurt?"

Scientists called it the Great Leap Forward, the moment when human consciousness reached its first great awakening. Once there had been unthinking brutes, slaves to their environment. Now the first of the _homo_ genus to reason walked the earth. To the man in the cage, that moment had finally arrived with a single word.

Nightcrawler.

Lyrics:

Oh this sun!  
Ah! This Day!  
Ah, this joy's  
sunniest day!  
Coursing blood,  
rejoicing spirit!  
Bliss beyond bounds,  
joyful delirium! (_Tristan & Isolde_, Act III, Scene 2)


End file.
